Upcoming:

• getting up at the crack of dawn tomorrow so I can teach my class, then 
• getting up at the crackier crack of dawn on Saturday, so I can fly away to a conference in Philadelphia.

Me: Let's go on a date on Friday. 

The historian: are you sure? you have to get up so early the next morning.

Me: What am I going to do? go to bed early or something?

Historian: [snickers] 

In between now and the crack and the date and the crackier, though, I have to

• make a snazzy conference handout, yo
• teach my class
• attend a meeting
• figure out what clothes I am going to wear, for the love of all that is holy!
• etcetera, soaked in stress and rolled in toasty flakes of anxiety.

And it's snowing. As in to snow: as in, when I was driving downtown to a meeting of this board I'm on, and I was listening to a truly hilarious story about this Quebecois chef who just wrote a book about maple syrup (sample recipe: squirrel sushi--no, the squirrel is not raw, but yes, the squirrel has, apparently, delicious meat because of all the acorns it eats, poor squirrel, and yes, there is maple syrup in the soy sauce. Now: say all of that in a Quebecois accent), and I got about halfway there and I was clearly driving into the snow. The kind of driving into the snow that makes you want to turn off the radio, slow down, notice you're not sure if you're driving in an actual lane anymore. 

Long story short, I got there and home safely, and when we just took the B for a walk, the snow was almost sheeting down, but a little gentler than that. Shaking my hair and clothes off, I created my own little storm.

Morning night person owl.

One of my earliest memories is of lying in bed when my parents were still up. I remember thinking, thinking, thinking, holding on to the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls my grandmother had made me, stroking the silk embroidery of their rag doll features. I could not--possibly would not, but it seemed more like it wasn't really possible to--sleep. From a very early age, I was a night owl.

Here are some worlds that are not organized for night owls:

1. school
2. childhood
3. work
4. young parenthood

And thus, and even so, I negotiated later bedtimes with my parents, and then when they were past policing my bedtime, I stayed up and stayed up and tried to be quiet. Headphones for my stereo. A little night light for reading. This--staying up all hours--has been going on, in other words, for ages.

I used to get up early to go to the dreaded early-morning LDS seminary. That was 6 a.m., the people, for religious formation. My God. I used to get up early for early morning classes in college, because, what, it was more virtuous? or something. Or maybe I just didn't know better. My first semester, I had a modern dance class at 7 a.m. three days a week. (leotard leotard leotard can't stop thinking it!) I used to get up early to swim and walk with a friend when my kids were young. Oh, I have arisen early in my day.

When I am left to my own devices, i.e., in the summer or on vacation or when I'm in Idaho, I go to bed around 1 a.m. and get up around 8-ish. It's not so bad, really--I do like the morning. I just don't like early morning, and I don't like to have to be ready to do anything in the morning, like work. Or talk. I'm ready for working and talking around 10. Ten-ish.

This semester, I am teaching a ten a.m. class. Quixotically, I get up super early on the days that class meets, so I can be to school by seven or so. If I have to be ready to talk by ten a.m., I need to get a good run at it. This means that three days a week I am generally up to see the dawn. Me, not a morning person, greeting the dawn with a silent scream.

One morning this week, I was up early enough to see this glowing, compensatory sunrise.